Frontier Fields Target Galaxy Clusters

These are NASA Hubble Space Telescope natural-color images of four target galaxy clusters that are part of an ambitious new observing program called The Frontier Fields. NASA's Great Observatories are teaming up to look deeper into the universe than ever before. With a boost from natural "zoom lenses" found in space, they should be able to uncover galaxies that are as much as 100 times fainter than what the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra space telescopes can typically see. The gravitational fields of the clusters brighten and magnify far-more-distant background galaxies that are so faint they would otherwise be unobservable. The foreground clusters range in distance from 3 billion to 5 billion light-years from Earth.

About the data

Abell 2744 (top left) Data were obtained as part of the HST proposal 11689 : R. Dupke (Eureka Scientific Inc.) et al.

MACS J0416.1-2403 (top right) Data were obtained as part of the HST proposal 12459 : M. Postman (STScI) and the CLASH Team

MACS J0717.5+3745 (bottom left) Data were obtained as part of HST proposal 10420 : H. Ebeling (University of Hawaii) et al.

MACS J1149.5+2223 (bottom right) 12068